


R + E

by tothewillofthepeople



Series: what love can do that dares love attempt [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: 1990s, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Fluff, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, M/M, POV Eddie Kaspbrak, Pining, Post-IT (2017), References to Shakespeare, Self-Esteem Issues, Teenage Losers Club (IT), eddie is a bitch and i like him SO much, richie climbs through eddie's window cinematic universe, teenage boys are their own content warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29563917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothewillofthepeople/pseuds/tothewillofthepeople
Summary: “I can’t wait to die in your arms,” Richie says, and then swoons so dramatically that Eddie has to catch him.“I think you technically die in mine,” Stan says dryly. “Wait,no—”Richie launches himself at Stan and the two of them almost go down in a tangle of limbs. “What do you think the odds are that we’ll make it to opening night in one piece?” Bev asks Eddie, conversationally.“Less than zero,” Eddie says, and he pushes Richie through the door so they can all get in the goddamn theater.(or, the Losers do some Shakespeare.)
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: what love can do that dares love attempt [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2190717
Comments: 11
Kudos: 102





	R + E

**Author's Note:**

> mentions of canon, mentions of panic attacks. this story is less about plot and more about atmosphere and aching.

As soon as Eddie enters the green room, Richie shouts out, “Here comes the heartthrob!”

It’s like Eddie can _feel_ everyone’s eyes dart to him, all expressions of pleasure and amusement. What Eddie wants to do is snap like a rubber band. Say something so stinging that Richie will be forced to draw back.

But he doesn’t. Instead he rolls his eyes and says, “And here comes the lunatic.” It’s not even a good comeback, but it makes Ben laugh and Bill crack a smile. They’ve claimed the biggest couch in the room for their own; Beverly is perched on one arm, Richie on the other. The rest of the Losers are crammed in the space between them.

No place for Eddie, but that’s his own fault for arriving last.

Stan points an imperious hand across the room. “Scripts are over there.” Then he turns around to smack Richie, who is trying (once again) to remove the pins from Stan’s kippa without him noticing. So far he hasn’t gotten away with it even a single time.

“Thanks,” Eddie mutters, and scoots across the room. He has to deal with Ben’s mom giving him an embarrassingly warm welcome, and a few handshakes from the other adults involved, before he can grab his script and get back to his friends.

Ben smiles and waves at his approach. Beverly flips him a pen and says, “Write your name on that. They don’t want people swapping.” Eddie takes a seat on the low table in front of the couch his friends have taken over and writes _EDDIE KASPBRAK_ on the cover of his script, right over where it says _Romeo and Juliet._

Bill and Stan are chattering about a movie they saw over the weekend. Beverly is highlighting lines in her script, watched fondly and carefully by Ben. Mike has his head tipped back and his eyes closed, like he’s taking a nap.

Richie, when Eddie deigns to look at him, is being a shithead. Like usual. He sticks his tongue out at Eddie but does not pause in his quest to drop a paperclip down the back of Stan’s shirt. Eddie glares at him. Richie winks.

He manages to get the paper clip into Stan’s shirt, undetected, and has moved onto a whole pencil by the time Arlene Hanscom calls them all to attention. Eddie twists around so he can see her, over by the door that leads to the stage. 

He hasn’t been out there yet. The sight of all the empty seats makes him nervous. 

“Thank you all for being here!” Mrs. Hanscom is saying. “Welcome to the first rehearsal! I thought we could all go around the room and introduce ourselves…”

Most of the adults go first, the ones playing roles like the Nurse or the Montague parents. Eddie tries hard to pay attention, even though he can hear his friends having whispered conversations over his shoulder. He wants to make a good impression. There are a couple of other kids from school involved—no one Eddie knows well. He doesn’t spend a lot of time with anyone other than the Losers.

The circle of introductions makes its way around to him and his friends eventually. “I’m Beverly Marsh,” Bev says, tucking her highlighter around her ear and glancing around the room. “I’m playing Juliet.” And Eddie can tell that the whole room looks at her, and at how beautiful she is, and nods to themselves about how perfect she’ll probably be. Eddie tries to breathe very evenly.

“I’m Ben,” says Ben, and he smiles over at his mom. “I’ll be playing Paris.”

Bill clears his throat, and his friends give him encouraging looks as he says, “M-my name is B-b-bill. I’ll be b-backstage doing p-p-p…” He stops and takes a breath. _“Props.”_

It’s always worse in front of people. Mike claps him on the shoulder. “Michael Hanlon,” he says, very politely, to the room at large. “I’ll also be working backstage.”

“Stan Uris. I’ll be Benvolio.”

“Uh, Eddie Kaspbrak,” says Eddie. “I’m, uh, Romeo.”

“Damn straight,” says Richie, and then turns his biggest grin to the room at large. “Richie Tozier. _I’m_ going to be Mercutio.”

He sounds so sure of himself when he says it. Eddie wishes, furiously, that he felt half as sure about anything. Why in god’s name had he said uh so many times when introducing himself? He wants to sink into the floor. He barely notices anything else that Mrs. Hanscom says about how rehearsal is going to go, and it takes him by surprise when all his friends start getting up from the couch. “What?” he hisses at Ben. “Where are we going?”

“Into the theater,” Ben says kindly. “We’re gonna do our read-through in there.” He’s unofficial wrangler of the Losers, seeing as his mom is the director. He takes it seriously but at least he’s nice about it.

Eddie grabs his script and darts after his friends. _Keep your head on straight, Eddie Kaspbrak!_ He catches them at the stage door, where Richie turns to him with a big grin.

“I can’t wait to die in your arms,” he says, and then swoons so dramatically that Eddie has to catch him. 

“I think you technically die in mine,” Stan says dryly. “Wait, _no—”_

Richie launches himself at Stan and the two of them almost go down in a tangle of limbs. “What do you think the odds are that we’ll make it to opening night in one piece?” Bev asks Eddie, conversationally.

“Less than zero,” Eddie says, and he pushes Richie through the door so they can all get in the goddamn theater.

They sit in a big circle of folding chairs on the stage. The Losers have to split up; Eddie stays with Bev, and finds Richie claiming the chair on his other side. Ben is already seated demurely next to his mother. Watching them together is almost like watching some sort of educational TV show about happy families. Eddie can’t explain it. He always wants to look away.

But Mrs. Hanscom is the director, so he has to sit up and listen as she guides them through reading the beginning of the script. Next to him, Beverly continues highlighting her lines when she isn’t talking. Eddie wishes he had brought his own highlighter, or that he could borrow hers. _Romeo_ stops looking like a real name at a certain point, because he’s been scanning the next for it so much.

“In love?” Stan asks, from across the circle. Richie shifts in his seat.

“Out,” Eddie replies.

“Of love?”

“Out of her favor, where I am in love.” It’s easier like this, back and forth with Stan. He can almost ignore the rest of his friends (!) and a bunch of adults (!!!) watching him. But every line is heavy on his tongue with the knowledge that he’ll have to memorize it.

“Tell me in sadness, who is that you love,” Stan presses.

Eddie’s face already feels hot, but when he arrives at “In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman,” and Richie _laughs_ at him, he decides that he really would like to die, thanks very much. Richie’s chair is too far away for Eddie to kick him, so he has to settle for glaring. It almost makes him lose his place on the page. It’s a relief when the scene ends shortly after, but then another one is quick on its heels.

Gosh, Romeo sure has a lot of scenes.

Eddie’s dread mounts higher and higher as the play unspools. He can hear it in the pitch of his own voice and prays that none of his friends can. Who wants a hero that sounds like a teakettle?

Beverly doesn’t sound nervous. Beverly is wide-eyed and perfect, already compelling even with a script in her hand. Everyone is going to love her. Even when she stumbles saying “I’ll look to like, if looking liking move,” she does it charmingly.

And then comes Richie’s first scene. Eddie is in it, and Stan too, and the worry just…melts. The words are unfamiliar but the dynamic is the same—their back-and-forth banter, Stan’s dry interjections. Eddie finds himself breathless as they come to the start of Mercutio’s monologue, and then he just has to sit and stare while Richie talks of dreams.

It’s…sort of perfect. For Richie to have a role where he can just ramble. He wiggles in his seat like he can’t sit still, and Eddie (who has no knowledge of stagecraft) can already tell that he’ll be a joy to direct in this, willing to move all over the stage as he burns through the famous words. Richie’s _excellent._ His mind has always moved too fast for his own good and he shows it off now, eating up the unfamiliar words with ease. Eddie almost forgets to interrupt him, when the time comes.

They keep moving. Eddie shares a sonnet with Beverly, and a shy glance at the moment of the scripted kiss. 

Act One ends. Mrs. Hanscom calls a break.

Eddie locks himself in the bathroom and has a very short and private panic attack.

When he unlocks the door, Beverly is there, leaning against the wall. “All good, champ?”

“Just stellar,” he says. “You?”

“We’ll have to run lines a lot,” she says, very casually. “Think you can put up with Richie being around all the time?”

Kill him now. “Yeah,” he says. “I think I can handle it.”

“Hell yeah.” She holds out her hand, almost business-like. Eddie shakes it with a little laugh. Oh, he loves her. He’s glad it gets to be her, and not some strange girl. Some classmate of theirs who would wrinkle their nose at the very _idea_ of loving Eddie Kaspbrak, even for show.

She ruffles his hair and slips past him into the bathroom with a wink.

They make it through the rest of the script without any mishaps. Richie dies, and Ben dies, and Eddie dies, and Beverly dies. Stan is the only one that lives, actually, of the Losers onstage. But it’s a quiet sort of living. He disappears from the script as soon as Richie does.

“Thank you’ll be able to handle all that chatter?” Richie asks Eddie, loudly, as they leave the theater after rehearsal. It’s hot and sunny outside, especially for late May, and Eddie can feel his palms sweating. He shifts his script into the crook of his arm.

“I c-c-can’t believe you g-get a sword,” Bill says, eyeing Richie warily. “That s-sounds b-b-bad.”

“It’s the worst idea anyone has ever had,” Stan says. “I’ll be shocked if no one loses an eye.”

“I’ll make sure it’s you, Stanny boy,” Richie says. “You can go as a pirate for Halloween. I’ll get you an eyepatch and everything.”

“Can’t watch birds with one eye,” Ben points out.

“You _can,”_ Bev says, “it would just be harder.”

Eddie’s just about had enough of this. “I have to get home,” he says loudly, over the ongoing discussion of one-eyed birdwatching. “I’ll see you all later.”

“Want a ride?” Bill asks. But Eddie shakes his head. He’s not in the mood to risk his life riding double on Silver. If anything, Bill is _more_ reckless on that bike since last summer. Richie is the only one who ever agrees to ride with him anymore.

“Give your mom a kiss for me!” Richie hollers, as Eddie walks away. Eddie flips him off over one shoulder, and hears a burst of laughter from the little group as it splinters apart behind him.

There’s sweat in the crease of his elbow. He shifts the script to his other arm. His head feels thick—words are difficult. They keep trying to tumble into archaic patterns. 

As he walks home, Eddie thinks to himself that Bill would have been Romeo, if Bill had wanted it.

All of the Losers are involved because of him. His parents shuffled him into the Shakespeare festival last year, hoping that a trial-by-fire of unfamiliar language in front of an audience would do _something_ productive to Bill’s stutter.

What no one had expected was for Big Bill to bag the role of Hamlet and deliver a performance so viciously heartbreaking that Eddie hadn’t been able to look him in the eyes for a week afterwards. When his stutter did come to break the prince’s articulate lines, it made his anguish all the more believable. His death scene had most of the audience in genuine tears.

But this year, when Arlene Hanscom called around to see which of the kids would like to audition, Bill had politely declined. He wanted to work backstage, he said.

Eddie wonders if Bill would have chosen differently, had he known that Beverly would be Juliet.

Sometimes he swears Bill—and Ben, too—are a little mad at him and trying not to be.

His mother only fusses a little when he gets home. Shakespeare is like kryptonite for parents, apparently. Even she couldn’t deny the pleasure of having her son doing something so _literary_ and _respectable._ Like many adults, she was unaware of how many dick jokes a boy like Richie Tozier would be able to find in the text. She also did not know that there was to be _kissing_ involved, because Eddie had not told her.

He turns down her offer of an afternoon snack and vaults up the stairs to his room. The top of the house is stifling in the early summer heat, but he can’t stand to be downstairs when she has the TV on, and he’s probably exhausted the amount of time he’s allowed to spend out of the house today.

He crosses to his bed and flings himself down on top of it. He ignores the boxes stacked in the corner of his room.

*

The nice thing about being in a play is that he’s guaranteed to see his friends most days, a pleasure which Eddie hadn’t anticipated. His mother can’t stop him from going to play practice, and it follows that she can’t stop him from being around the Losers.

Even on days when he doesn’t rehearse, Eddie spends a lot of time heading over to the Tozier’s house to see Beverly, so they can sit on the porch and run lines. 

And Richie is always there too, of course.

It’s due to Richie’s loud bullheadedness that Bev is even in town for the summer at all; he’d nagged his parents so relentlessly about letting his _good pal Bev_ come stay that Went and Maggie Tozier had finally relented, just to get their son to shut up. There are strict rules involved (no being in a room together with the door closed, etc.) that both Richie and Beverly complain about as being _entirely unnecessary;_ they don’t like each other _like that._ But it’s a small price to pay for having their circle of seven complete once more.

Eddie knows that Bill and Ben are jealous of Richie, because he gets to sleep in the same house as Bev and see her pajamas and toothbrush and bath towel.

But Eddie isn’t.

“That’s not the point.” Bev’s voice is loud enough that Eddie can hear it all the way from the sidewalk in front of the Tozier’s house. “No, listen. That’s not the point. It’s not _about_ whether or not they love each other.”

The grass in the Tozier’s yard is thick and green. Bev’s roller skates are laying by the porch steps like she’d just tossed them there. Eddie looks at them a little longingly as he walks up; he’s always wanted his own pair, but his mother won’t get him any and he doesn’t feel brave enough to ask Beverly if he could try them on, please, just once, just for a bit.

Bev is in the white wicker chair on the porch, arguing with Richie, who has himself perched on the railing like some clumsy bird of prey. “I thought that was the whole point of the play,” Richie says, as Eddie reaches the steps. “The love story.”

“It is. Hey, Eddie. But not the question of if they love each other. The more interesting question is, what happens if they _do?”_

Richie rolls his head back and lets his tongue loll out of his mouth, shooting Eddie a look as he does so. “What’s the damn difference?”

The renewed sun has brought new freckles to all of their faces, Bev’s most of all. Even Eddie has a few scattered across his cheeks, despite the sunscreen his mother applies there religiously. He rubs the bridge of his nose—he always worries about allergies, when he’s outside—and leans against the railing next to Richie.

“If the play is about whether or not Romeo and Juliet love each other,” Bev says, “then it’s just the two of them, back and forth until the audience dies of boredom. Just them trying to prove it. The action of the play hinges on the belief that they _do_ love each other, and they’re willing to rush into a marriage for it, and they’re willing to die for it. The whole thing falls apart if there’s no love.”

“What are you nerds even talking about?” Eddie asks, and then smiles when it makes Richie guffaw.

Bev rolls her eyes. “Richie’s not convinced that Juliet could lock down a man after meeting him once.”

“It is kinda fast,” Eddie says apologetically. 

“Everything was fast,” Bev argues. “People were dying of the plague left and right, they had to get that shit figured out. _Also,_ it’s a better story if it happens that way.”

“I guess so,” Eddie says. He doesn’t know how to articulate the actual belief he has, resting beneath his sternum. He knows that tension makes everything more dire, including love—fuck, would he and the other Losers have become friends with Bev at _all_ last summer if it hadn’t been for the constant threat they were under? The fear was strong; so was the affection. He understands that.

“She has a point,” Richie says. “It’s not like I want this play to be any longer than it already is.” 

Eddie snorts and kicks him.

And as he and Bev launch into rehearsing their lines—both helped and hindered by Richie, who is more than willing to read any auxiliary characters but insists on doing so in the worst Voices possible—Eddie thinks that he even understands something of rivalry, of family animosity. Isn’t his mother always trying to warn him away from his friends? Away from Richie in particular? For being Not The Right Sort of People?

 _I guess parents have always been fucking up their kids,_ Eddie thinks to himself. _Well. I’m not gonna let her fuck up me._ They keep reading. Bev can memorize faster than anyone the boys have ever seen; it takes Eddie way more tries to get something down, eternally saying, “Start again, let me do it again!” 

The afternoon burns and lengthens but the shade of the porch is cool. Bev’s hair sticks to her forehead with sweat. Before long, Maggie Tozier brings them each a tall class of cold lemonade, and Eddie drinks it and laughs at Richie’s attempts to deliver the prologue in a variety of accents: pinched and fussy British, eerie and robotic, low Southern drawl.

*

June bleeds into July. Rehearsals pick up frequency. One hot Monday finds Eddie waiting in the green room for the rest of his friends. The rain all weekend had meant that his mother kept him in, and his desire to see their familiar faces is something like a bruise.

They’re doing Richie’s death on that particular day, and Eddie is keyed-up and excited at the thought of getting his hands on a sword for the first time. He can’t wait for Bill and Mike to arrive and get all the prop weapons out of storage.

Stan gets there first, and sits with Eddie on the wide low couch while they wait. He seems as calm as ever, but Eddie’s pretty sure that he’s just as excited to get some sword practice in. They chatter about inconsequential things as the rest of the cast trickles in. Eddie wants to see the third _Back to the Future_ movie; Stan is convinced it’ll be rubbish. “The second one wasn’t nearly as good as the first,” he keeps saying. “Sequels are _always_ worse.”

“But they’re _cowboys,”_ Eddie says. This is just about the only thing he knows about the movie, and only because of the image on the poster. “That’s gotta be hilarious!” Eddie loves Westerns. He’s certainly guilty of pretending his bike is a high-spirited stallion sometimes, but he knows he’s not the only one. 

“It doesn’t make even make sense for them to be cowboys,” Stan says. “It’s completely random.”

“I mean, I bet there’s a reason.”

“I bet there’s not.”

Eddie grins, triumphant. “Does that mean you’ll go see it with me? So we can see who’s right?”

“No,” Stan says flatly. _“You_ go see it, and then tell me.”

A new voice breaks in. “What, you expect him to tell the truth?” Richie flings himself onto the couch next to Eddie at breakneck speed, making Eddie bounce and almost fall into Stan. “I wouldn’t trust the Spaghetti as far as I could throw him.”

“Which can’t be far, with your wimpy arms,” Stan says. He waves hello to Beverly, who is already being pulled across the room by the costume assistants. They have a dress for her; Eddie knows she would rather be with the boys, testing swords.

“Ready to die?” Eddie asks Richie, and Richie beams at him.

“Out of context, that would strike terror into my very soul,” he says. “It’s like getting a death prophecy from one of the Looney Tunes.” Eddie shoves him off the couch, and then punches Stan on the shoulder for laughing. Richie hops back up, impossible to subdue. “I am,” he says. “Ready to die. Like, theatrically. Not in reality. Not until I can give your mom one final kiss goodbye. I can’t wait to make people cry.”

“Tears of joy,” Eddie says, fast, and Richie grins at him again. Eddie can’t help but smile back. Smiling is contagious. He can’t help it, even if Stan often seems immune. 

Ben and his mom show up next, and Bill and Mike walk in together, trailing the head prop guy. Connor Bowers is there too, looking as eager as anyone to get his hands on a sword. “All right!” Mrs. Hanscom says, clapping her hands together and looking around the green room. “Do we have everyone we need for the fight scene? Wonderful. Let’s go.”

They head into the theater. Bill and Mike follow them in, carrying the weapon bags—some sort of stiff red and black fabric, one for each individual sword. 

“Now, these aren’t toys,” Mrs. Hanscom says, as the bags are unzipped. “We’re gonna go over some rules first so no one gets hurt and we’re all on the same page, all right?”

Richie doesn’t look thrilled at the prospect of having to listen to an adult instead of screw around with a weapon, so Eddie makes sure to listen extra hard. Just in case. So that if Richie fucks up later, Eddie will be able to fix it.

They’re split into two groups to learn how to handle the swords without looking like kids play-fighting with sticks. Mrs. Hanscom keeps Richie, Stan, and Connor with her; Eddie and Ben go with the head props guy, whose name Eddie doesn’t remember and is too embarrassed to ask.

“A stage fight is like a dance,” Ben says to Eddie, because Ben already knows all this stuff. “You gotta choreograph it.”

“Sorry I have to kill you,” Eddie says, and he means it.

Ben smiles at him. “That’s okay. Sorry you have to die.”

They’re each given a sword. Ben’s already a natural, but it takes some time for Eddie to figure out how to hold it without tucking his elbows in too far. They block and parry, slow and deliberate, and give half-serious suggestions to the prop guy for how their duel to the death should go.

Eddie’s pulled away before long, to join the other group. Richie waves a wild welcome with his sword, apparently having already forgotten his etiquette; Stan forces his arm down with one stern hand. “What are we doing?” Eddie asks.

“Killing Richie,” says Connor, and Eddie rolls his eyes. 

“Killing Connor,” Richie corrects. “You have to avenge me, man!”

“Let him rot,” Stan says.

That gets a pout from Richie; he claps one hand to his chest and says, “I’m wounded, Stan.”

Connor jabs with his sword. “Mortally.”

“Cut it out,” Eddie snaps at him. “We don’t need two idiots waving their swords around.”

“You’re all idiots,” Stan says, and both Richie and Eddie round on him cheerfully to tell him that if they’re idiots, so is he.

“Boys,” Mrs. Hanscom says with a sigh. “A little focus, please?”

And so they begin. Stan’s maybe the best of any of them at making Shakespearean intonation sound natural in his mouth. “By my head, here come the Capulets,” he says, and it doesn’t sound stilted or anything, the way it so often does in Eddie’s mouth.

And Richie, god, he’s just so damn _funny_ with the way he moves when he says, “By my heel, I care not.”

It’s like a dance, Eddie reminds himself, watching as Connor enters and he and Richie begin to circle each other. They go slow, and stop at the moment Eddie is supposed to intervene so they can block him into the scene. When they get to Richie’s death, it’s so _close:_ Eddie in Richie’s face to keep him from fighting, Connor pressing in from behind to stab Richie under Eddie’s arm. 

At one point Connor jostles Eddie so bad that he tumbles forward. His life flashes before his eyes, and he has a moment to be irritated that he beat a killer clown only to die a year later of impalement by prop sword—but then Richie catches him, dropping his own sword as he does so. It falls to the stage with a clatter and everyone jumps, Eddie worse than anyone.

Richie hauls him upright and then lets go. “You good, Eds?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and then turns to scowl at Connor. “Don’t push me.”

“Get closer to him,” Connor retorts rudely. “I can’t stab him if you’re leaving that much room for Jesus.”

Eddie’s prepared to heft his sword and start fighting for real, but he’s stopped by an arch look from Stan. 

“Once more,” Mrs. Hanscom says, oblivious to any tension. “Eddie, get closer to Richie. He’s your best friend.”

Richie gives a goofy little smile. Eddie rolls his eyes, but he smiles back.

They run the blocking again. Eddie pushes right up in Richie’s space, like he’s trying to stop him from saying something stupid during any normal day. And Richie grins right in Eddie’s face, like he knows what Eddie’s thinking, before going blank with shock and pain as Connor rushes in to stab him.

“I am hurt,” Richie pants, basically right into Eddie’s mouth, and then he staggers back into Stan. 

“That was really good,” Mrs. Hanscom says, before the scene can go further. “Try it once more—Richie, can you wait another beat before you move backwards?”

Circling, taunting, antagonism. Connor and Richie fight, despite Eddie’s best efforts. And Eddie moves in close, and Richie gets stabbed in his arms. They stay there for a longer moment: Richie blank with agony and Eddie, uncomprehending. 

“What, art thou hurt?” Stan asks, as Richie tumbles back into his arms again.

“Ay, ay, a scratch,” Richie says. He plays pain well—pain, and the suppression of pain. Like he’s trying hard to not let Eddie see how bad it really is, because he doesn’t want to worry him.

It certainly won’t be difficult for Eddie to turn and kill Connor. They block that next.

Richie and Stan sit on the lip of the stage together to watch, joined by Ben. Whereas Richie and Connor’s fight has mostly been about showmanship, Eddie is supposed to be swift and furious when he murders Connor. _Watch your temper, Eddie Kaspbrak!_ They run things slow, then faster, then fast. Richie wolf-whistles when Eddie delivers the killing stroke. Connor slumps to the stage like a marionette with his strings cut.

“That was excellent, boys,” Mrs. Hanscom says, after a few run-throughs of the whole scene. “Put your swords back in their carriers, all right? Try not to knock them against each other, if you can…”

Bill and Mike appear from the wings to gather the weapons bags and store them with the rest of the props. Eddie, Richie, and Stan make to follow them into the green room, followed by Connor (much to Eddie’s annoyance). However, they’ve just gotten to the door when Mrs. Hanscom calls Connor back with a question about his costume (much to Eddie’s delight).

He smiles to himself as he walks out of the theater with his friends— _only_ his friends. The other Losers are in the green room, already finished with their tasks for the day, and they spill outside as a septet once more.

The air is still hot and thick, even in the early evening. “That was so lame,” Richie keeps saying. _“Way_ too many rules, it takes all the fun out of it.”

“Yeah, but it keeps you from impaling anyone,” Mike says, and Richie leers at him.

“Don’t worry, Mikey,” he says, “I’ll still be impaling folks, all right.” And then he throws his head back and laughs, drowning out the exasperated chorus of _beep-beeps_ he gets for that one.

“I still think it’s fun,” Eddie says. Maybe he takes some small pleasure in getting to kill Connor Bowers over and over, but that’s for him to know. “They’re cool, even for props.”

“They’re from my mom’s college theater troupe,” Ben says proudly. “They’re real professional.”

“They were the b-b-best part of the show last year,” Bill says. “It j-just feels c-cool to _hold_ one.”

Eddie privately agrees. It’s hard to feel lost and insecure with a fucking sword in his hands, even though he doesn’t quite know how to use it yet.

“Wish I could get a sword,” Bev grouses.

“You get a dagger,” Stan points out. “Arguably cooler.” Bev brightens at that and gives Stan a warm smile. 

“The dagger is pretty cool,” Ben concurs. “I think my mom is gonna bring that to the next rehearsal.” He clearly wants Beverly to smile at him too, and his face flushes red when she does.

Eddie’s stomach chooses that moment to growl, reminding him that he needs to get home. The sun is casting long shadows over Derry; if he doesn’t make it back before it sets, his mother with have a conniption. “I should head out,” he says. Everyone else nods, and their little circle of seven starts to dissolve.

“Come on, Miss Martian,” Richie says, slinging an arm around Bev’s shoulders and tugging her away. “Mom made meatloaf tonight and I’m _starving.”_

“Goodnight!” Bev calls, waving over her shoulder at the other Losers. They call their farewells after her.

Bill stares at the retreating figures of Richie and Bev for a long moment, and Eddie glances away, embarrassed. He wants to stare too. But he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t like Beverly _like that._ So why this little ache in him?

It takes him some time to untangle the feeling, but as the two figures disappear into the early dark together, Eddie realizes that _Beverly_ is the one he’s jealous of.

What he wouldn’t give to be the one walking through the night with Richie, and arriving with him the next day. To eat dinner at the Tozier’s table with Richie’s elbow digging into his side every time he gets excited. To spend so much time with him.

Eddie doesn’t know what the fuck to do with _that_ realization.

*

So maybe he spends the next several weeks seeking Richie out specifically, wanting to test this new tender awareness. He flings his script at Richie whenever he wants to run lines—he asks for extra run-throughs of the scenes Romeo shares with Mercutio—he volunteers to help carry costumes into the green room after Richie volunteers first—

And on one night, in the hot middle of July, when Mrs. Hanscom is looking for Beverly, Eddie offers to find her. Because he knows by now that wherever Bev is, Richie is sure to be nearby.

His hunch is correct. He finds the two of them outside, sneaking cigarettes. “Seriously?” Eddie asks shrilly. “On the night I hafta kiss you?”

A flash of guilt flashes across Bev’s face and she stubs her cigarette at once. “Sorry, Eddie. Wasn’t thinking.”

Eddie is already rooting through his fanny pack. “You’re lucky I have mints on me,” he mutters, holding out the little tin. “Else I’d tell Mrs. Hanscom that I’ve got mono.”

“Wouldn’t that mean you’d have to be out of the play?”

“Nah,” Richie says. He’s still sucking unrepentantly on his cigarette, but taking care to blow the smoke away from Eddie. “We’d just tell her it’s walking mono. Like walking pneumonia, ya know?”

“That’s not what that _means,”_ Eddie says, exasperated, but Bev cuts him off before he can work up too much steam.

“We were deciding what we would ask for if we had one wish from an all-powerful genie,” she tells him. 

Eddie blinks, properly diverted. “Isn’t it usually three wishes?”

“Stakes are higher if you only have one,” Richie says. “Gotta make it good.”

“Gee,” Eddie says seriously, “then I guess you’d better wish for some acting skills, that might be your only shot.”

Richie chokes on smoke and Bev shrieks with laughter. “Yeah, yeah, get your chucks in,” Richie says, and then coughs into the crook of his elbow. “That was cold, Eds.”

“I’d ask for teleportation powers,” Bev says. “Then I could come visit you all whenever I wanted.” Richie jerks his head around to stare at her and she shrugs at him. “Might help,” she says. “Maybe then I wouldn’t miss you all so much.”

“Yeah,” Richie says. He coughs one final time.

“I’d wish for you to quit smoking,” Eddie says impulsively, because sometimes he _does_ wish that, whenever he hears Richie coughing or thinks too hard about the chemicals in his lungs. It’s maybe more honest than he really meant to be, but he knows Richie won’t take him seriously.

And he’s right. “What fucking ever,” is Richie’s immediate response. “I already know your real wish.”

Eddie bristles. “Fuck you, no you don’t.”

“Uh, yeah I do,” Richie says. “Full immunity.”

Beverly frowns. “Like, from the law?”

Eddie is equally lost. “I haven’t been robbing any banks, Rich.”

“You’re both so fucking stupid,” Richie says. “Medical immunity. Right? Like, to never get sick from anything, ever again. No allergies, even.” He takes a triumphant drag on his cigarette. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that isn’t what you want.”

But he can’t. It sounds…fuck, wouldn’t that be something? What would Eddie even do all day, if he never had to be frightened again? The question feels like a precipice. He backs away. “What would you ask for, then?”

“Time travel,” Richie says immediately. “So I can go back in time and cuck your dad.”

Eddie just about explodes. “You’re so disgusting! Oh my god! My dad is dead, you asshole! Show some respect! Bev, stop _laughing!”_

She tries to look apologetic, but tears of mirth are gathering in her eyes, and she has to walk to the curb and back to get her giggles under control. Eddie crosses his arms and seethes.

“I do mean it though,” Richie says. He has the cigarette tucked in one corner of his mouth and a smile in the other. “Time travel. Would be pretty cool.” A memory teases at the back of Eddie’s mind—Richie and Mike’s vision quest from last summer—but he bats it away. Not now. He doesn’t need to think about any of that now. “I’d go to so many concerts.”

“Fuck that,” Beverly says. “You could go see an original Shakespeare production.”

“Nerd alert,” Eddie mutters. Bev kicks him in the ankle.

Richie looks thoughtful, though. “Is that what you want, Bev? Go back in time and do this shit for real?”

But Beverly shakes her head. “Girls weren’t allowed onstage back then,” she says sourly. “All the parts were played by men.”

 _“All_ of them?”

“Gay,” Richie snickers, but then he turns to Eddie and says, “Ya hear that, Eds? By all rights _I_ should be Juliet.”

Something like a lightning bolt goes right through Eddie’s chest. He lifts a hand to his sternum. Christ, is he having a heart attack? “I’d drop out of the play if you were,” he says automatically, and Richie and Bev both laugh.

The door to the green room slams open and Stan sticks his head out. “They’re looking for you, Bev,” he says, and shoots Eddie the stink eye for having forgotten his mission. Eddie swallows guiltily.

“Coming in?” Beverly asks, but Richie shakes his head and holds up the still-smoldering end of his cigarette. She ruffles Eddie’s hair fondly and heads inside.

Eddie knows he should follow her. They’re a matched set in this production, and he knows that tonight in particular they’re running the scene with the _kiss._ (He brushed his teeth three times before coming to rehearsal.) But he doesn’t want to head inside just yet.

“You good?” Richie asks. He jerks his chin, indicating the hand that Eddie still has pressed to his chest.

Eddie drops it and nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Really wish you’d stop smoking, Rich.”

“Why? Not like you’re gonna be kissing me.” But Richie stubs out his cigarette, and that does more confusing things to Eddie’s chest than he currently feels equipped to parse. “Unless you were angling to get some practice in.” He says this last with a leer.

Eddie jerks away from him. “I’m not kissing two of you in one night,” he says hotly. _“That’s_ how people get mono, Richie.”

“Well, gimme a mint anyway, just in case I need to step in.” Richie winks, but he can’t really wink yet, so both his eyes blink closed-then-open real quick. Like if he does it fast enough no one will notice that he can’t do it right.

Eddie grumbles, but he fishes the little tin out again and offers it to Richie. He feels warm and panicked and stupid as a goldfish. He tries not to stare as Richie puts the mint between his teeth and grins at him.

“Run lines with me,” Eddie says abruptly. “You can come over tomorrow. My mom is going to get her hair done.”

“Golly,” Richie says. “Is there even a point to coming over if your mom isn’t there?” But he hooks his arm around Eddie’s shoulders as they head inside, and Eddie knows him well enough to take that as a yes.

*

The next day is agony. The waiting, while trying to not look like he’s waiting. It’s a Saturday, so there’s no rehearsal that night, and Eddie knows that his mother must be wondering why he’s not trying to escape the house and go see his friends. He debates telling her he has a stomachache, and then realizes that her fussing will only make the afternoon worse. What if she cancels her salon appointment to stay with him?

So he stays in his room with a comic book and tries to look normal every time she comes to the top of the stairs to peer at him.

Finally, _finally,_ in the early afternoon she leaves. Eddie tosses his comic book aside and heads downstairs so he can keep a watch on the sidewalk. He wants to know as soon as Richie arrives.

(He wants to look at Richie while he walks down the street—he wants to know what Richie’s like when he doesn’t think he’s being watched—when he’s not _performing_ for whatever friends or adults are in the room—that’s normal, right?)

But Richie’s dad drops him off. Eddie blinks at the sight of the familiar station wagon pulling up in front of the house, and then he jumps off the couch with a curse because Richie is already barreling up the walk to the front door. He manages to give the bell one obnoxious ring before Eddie throws the door open and says, “Jesus, Rich, you made your dad _drive?”_

“That’s not my dad, he’s my chauffeur,” Richie says, grinning. “I’m moving up in the world, Eddie baby.” His hair is a mess. His shirt is blue.

“Don’t call me baby.” Eddie opens the door wider. “I can’t believe you’re really that lazy.”

“Aw, he was on his way to the grocery store, he offered!” Richie kicks off his shoes and then, at a stern look from Eddie, picks them up again and sets them neatly on the mat. “You said you wanted to run lines?”

So Eddie leads him upstairs. It’s the same as any other day—he doesn’t know why he almost feels shy about pushing open his bedroom door and ushering Richie in.

Richie’s eyes are drawn to the boxes in the corner as soon as he enters. They’re empty, still; Eddie can’t bear to start filling them. “Delaying the inevitable?” Richie asks, but the quirk of his mouth is more hurt than anything.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Eddie mutters. He flops down on his bed. “Did you bring your script?”

“Must have forgotten it,” Richie says breezily. He settles himself in the chair at Eddie’s desk and pokes at the little silvery Newton’s cradle that Eddie has there. “Guess we’ll have to share.”

“Just take mine,” Eddie grouses. “I need to have this memorized, anyway.”

“Which bit did you want to do?”

“Um,” Eddie says. “Uh, the dance stuff is freshest in my memory. Because we did it last night.”

“You sure did,” Richie leers. He pulls back one of the silver balls on the Newton’s cradle and releases it to slam into the others with a tiny clack. Both boys watch the motion of the thing for a long moment. It’s hypnotizing—or maybe Eddie is just too nervous to look away. 

“Don’t be disgusting,” Eddie says finally. “It’s _Bev.”_

“Well, now it’s me.” Richie pushes himself to his feet. “Where are we starting?”

“Top of the sonnet, I guess.”

“Want your cue line?”

“Sure. Yes, please.”

Richie clears his throat, putting on a Voice that is clearly supposed to be Connor Bowers. It’s not even a little bit accurate. “I will withdraw,” he says, voice low, “but this intrusion shall now seeming sweet convert to bitter gall.”

Eddie realizes, to his surprise, that Richie isn’t reading from the page. He has the lines—which aren’t even his own—already memorized.

“If I profane,” Eddie starts, “with my unworthiest hand…”

He can’t fucking do this.

“What’s the matter?” Richie asks. He picks up Eddie’s script. “You already know this bit, I know you do.”

“It’s different when I’m not doing the motions,” Eddie blurts out, because he _did_ learn this scene in tandem with a dance.

Richie gives a huge, put-upon sigh. “Every day I suffer so much,” he says, and then he steps closer to Eddie and puts one hand in the air.

Eddie stares at him.

“Come on,” Richie says, wiggling his fingers. “I don’t know all your fancy dance moves, but if you need to put your hands up to help you remember…”

“Fine,” Eddie snaps, and brings his hand up to rest against Richie’s. “Just…circle with me.”

Richie grins but does as he’s told. The two of them start to revolve slowly, in the middle of Eddie’s room, like dancers in a music box. Eddie feels like an absolute jackass.

“If I profane,” he tries again, “with my unworthiest hand—”

It’s easier this time, with the motion to distract him from Richie’s small, mocking grin. Eddie gives his lines as smooth as anything.

But then they have to stop so he can _murder_ Richie, for launching into Juliet’s lines with the most grating falsetto imaginable. It exists on a frequency that Eddie previously thought was reserved for bats. 

“You said you’d take this seriously!” Eddie hisses at him. They’ve stopped revolving now, and Eddie has both hands on his hips.

“When did I say that?” Richie snorts. “Have you met me? Have you met _Shakespeare?_ The whole play is a shitshow. It would literally be a comedy except that everyone dies at the end.”

“Oh, yeah,” Eddie scoffs, “that’s right. Just take out the literal most important scenes and it would be funny as shit.”

“Say what you will, I think Mercutio’s scenes are pretty funny.”

“Well, Mercutio isn’t _in_ this scene.”

“Fuck you, yeah he is,” Richie retorts. “He’s the one that got Romeo to the stupid party in the first place.”

“Yeah, but,” Eddie blusters, “he doesn’t have any lines or anything!”

“Rub it in, why don’t you,” Richie grouses, but his faux-outrage is melting into a smile. 

Eddie puts his hand back up. “Just fucking talk normally, please.”

And to his surprise, Richie does. They spin slowly, stop, switch hands, turn the other direction. Smooth as anything. And Richie looks at Eddie through his stupid-huge glasses and says all of Juliet’s lines.

“—And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.” They stand with their palms still pressed together, like they’re getting ready to arm wrestle. Eddie is distracted by the size of Richie’s hands—have they always been so much bigger than his own? More growth spurt nonsense, surely. Richie has gotten something like three inches taller since last summer.

“Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?” Eddie asks quietly. He looks up at Richie.

Richie stares back. “Aye, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.”

As Eddie gives the next couplet, he reflects that kissing Beverly had been…strange. Sort of nice. It was Eddie’s first kiss, even though he knew it didn’t really count. 

The other Losers had been too embarrassed to look at either of them once they’d gotten offstage, until Richie made an atrociously off-color joke and Eddie tried to kill him in the middle of the green room. After that, everything was normal again.

“Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake,” Richie says in the present moment. His eyes are more intent than Eddie has ever seen them.

Eddie doesn’t know what would happen if Richie were to kiss him now. He doesn’t think anything would ever be normal again. “Then move not,” he says quietly, “while my prayer’s effect I take.”

Last night, he had put his hand on Beverly’s jaw and kissed her carefully. His fingers twitch, wondering if he’s brave enough to do it again.

And then Richie puts his palm over Eddie’s face and shoves him backwards. 

Eddie falls on his bed, spluttering. “What the fuck was that for!”

But Richie can barely answer, bent double laughing as he is. “You should have seen your _face!”_ he howls.

Eddie sits up and crosses his arms. “You’re a dick,” he says. His heart is going a thousand miles an hour. Jesus, is he stupid? Richie doesn’t want to kiss him. He should be grateful that it didn’t get that far.

(But he still thinks about asking. _It didn’t count, Richie. With Beverly it didn’t count. Won’t you kiss me for real, won’t you, please, won’t you?)_

“You kiss by the book,” Richie returns, cheeky. And then he takes his voice back up to a screaming falsetto: _“Madame, your mother craves a word with you!”_

Eddie really is going to kill him. He launches himself off the bed and catches Richie right in the stomach with his shoulder, like a linebacker. Richie’s breath leaves him in a huff and the two of them tumble to the floor. Eddie rolls onto his knees first, already braced for Richie’s retaliation, but Richie isn’t moving.

“You good, dude?” Eddie asks, shuffling closer on his knees. Richie flops over onto his back, gesturing ineffectively to his chest. His mouth is open like a fish, shocked and round, and Eddie realizes all at once that he’d completely knocked the wind out of him. “Jesus, sorry!” Eddie says. His hands flutter. He doesn’t know how to help and he doesn’t know where he’s allowed to touch and Richie’s eyes are so _wide._

Fuck, all the time Eddie spends worrying about not being able to breathe, and now he’s gone and done it to someone else—

But Richie coughs a moment later, and takes a huge breath in, and says “Fuck you.” His voice is hoarse, but lacking any real vitriol.

“Sorry,” Eddie says again, wretched. He knows how awful the sensation is. Like drowning on land. A horrible ache deep in the lungs, and the body rioting in confusion. “Are you okay?”

“Just peachy,” Richie grinds out. “Shuttup a minute, let me breathe.”

“Okay. Yeah, okay. Sorry.”

Richie waves the apology away. He puts one hand over his diaphragm. Eddie watches the way his chest rises and falls, rises and falls, steady and sure. 

Eddie has nightmares about not breathing. Like he’s hauled up in midair and all the oxygen is sucked out of a room and he can’t do anything but hang there and suffocate. This isn’t how he wanted to steal Richie’s breath. He feels horrible. “We don’t have to do Shakespeare crap anymore, if you don’t want to,” he mutters. 

Richie takes a few more deep breaths. “You seem like you’re pretty well-memorized,” he says. He sits up and pushes his glasses up his nose. “Christ. Warn a guy next time you try to impale him with your bony-ass shoulders.” This is how Eddie knows he is forgiven. 

He pushes at Richie’s knee with his foot, one final silent apology. “You’ve got the lines down pretty well yourself.”

“Like you said, I don’t talk in that scene. Nothing to do but float in the background and listen to you all yammer away.” His expression has lost the pained shock of earlier. “Stan and I just spin circles and pretend to look up the girls’ skirts.”

Eddie wrinkles his nose. “Did Mrs. Hanscom tell you to do that?”

“Nah.” Richie gives him another one of his almost-winks. “We’re just really getting into character.”

Eddie shakes his head disapprovingly. He can’t imagine Stan doing that, anyway. Stan looks at girls the way he looks at birds: respectfully, lovingly, and from a distance.

“Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“Why didn’t you ask Beverly to run these lines with you?” Richie is looking at him with his head tipped to one side. “She’s the one actually doing ‘em.”

Oh, Eddie does _not_ have an answer for this question. “Didn’t she say she was hanging out with Ben today?” he deflects.

Richie squints. “She went to see a movie with Mike,” he says slowly, “and it was a last-minute decision.”

“Huh,” Eddie says. _Shit shit shit._ “Could have sworn she said she was busy.”

“You’re being weird,” Richie tells him baldly.

“Jesus, maybe I wanted to hang out with you!” Eddie says, stung. “I haven’t had you to myself all summer.” And then he shuts his mouth quick, because _that’s_ not what he meant to say.

But Richie doesn’t tease him for it. Richie beams, looking bright and pleased. “Spaghetti!” he says grandly. “Did you _miss_ me? Seeing me every day at rehearsal isn’t enough?”

_(Won’t you?)_

“That hardly counts as hanging out,” Eddie mutters. And it doesn’t, not really. Not when all of Eddie’s attention needs to be fixed on someone else. Not when Eddie’s onstage more than almost anyone else, and can’t chill in the green room between acts. Not when Richie does his stage fighting practice with Connor fucking Bowers.

“Well, neither does this,” Richie says, flapping Eddie’s own script at him. “Come on. Let’s go watch TV. You got any good food?”

“I’m sure we can rustle something up,” Eddie says, and leads the way downstairs. He has to keep an eye on the clock—his mother won’t like it if Richie’s on their couch when she gets back. But the risk is worth it, for the way Richie sings loudly with his head in the pantry, on the hunt for unhealthy snacks that probably don’t exist.

*

When he goes to bed that night, Eddie lies back, stares at his ceiling, and thinks about a world where Richie really does get to be his Juliet.

Because then Eddie would have reasons for looking at him, and smiling at him, and taking his hands, and crying when he cried. There would be context. Explanations. No one would look at them twice. And Eddie could kiss him, and that would be okay, because there’s no admission of wanting involved. A higher power (Ben’s mom) would decree it, and Eddie is a good boy and he does what the adults tell him to do, and he would kiss Richie, and it wouldn’t be terrifying at all.

“I’m such a coward,” he whispers into the blue air of his room. His eyes prick with tears and he holds them shut as tight as he can.

It’s almost like taking a deep breath and holding it for days, because Eddie keeps that blue deep inside him for the rest of the week. It drags him down, makes him somber in rehearsal and less likely to laugh at any of Richie’s antics. And Eddie can tell that the Losers can tell, but he can’t get himself to snap out of it.

Finally, Richie corners him backstage during their last rehearsal of the week and asks, very seriously, “Who pissed in your cornflakes? You’ve been moping around all week like you hafta die for real.”

“Leave me alone,” Eddie says, rolling his eyes. “If I’m depressed, it’s from having to put up with _you_ all day.”

“You don’t mean that,” Richie says, grinning. “I’m delightful.” He gets his face right up close to Eddie’s. “Come on. Tell Doctor Trashmouth what’s the matter.”

“I’m just getting stressed about the show,” Eddie invents, which is true. “You know. Having people watch me and stuff.”

“Oh, is that all? Shit, Eds, we’re all in that boat.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, “but I’m, like, the _lead._ What if no one believes me? I’m not—”

“Not what?”

Eddie squirms. He doesn’t know how to put it into words. He’s not much of a romantic hero, especially not with Bill walking around all soulful and tragic with the props. “Who’s gonna believe that Beverly could be in love with _me?”_

“Eddie.” Richie is all but gaping at him. “Seriously? With your big brown eyes? You’re heartbreaker handsome. Every girl in the audience is gonna be sighing after you. The thing that’s hard to believe is why half the characters aren’t already on their knees when you walk onstage.”

“Stop,” Eddie hisses, swatting at him. His face feels hot and he knows he must be blushing firetruck-red, awful and obvious. “Don’t be such a dick.”

“Bro, I am dead serious,” Richie says. “It makes sense to me now. I’ve always called bullshit on Billy Shakes because, like, hello, there isn’t a bitch in this school I would die for and I’ve known most of them for _years._ Juliet being down to clown with Romeo after a single night? Yeah fucking right.” And then he puts his hands on Eddie’s shoulders and gets his face up close to Eddie’s face again and says, “But it makes sense if it’s you. You’re the swell kind of guy ol’ Shakespeare was writing about. You start talking and it’s so goddamn _sincere._ You’re good at it. Being a lover.” And then he grins and ruffles Eddie’s hair like he’s a fucking dog. “Plus you’re just so _cute!”_

Eddie shrieks and bats his hands away, internally mourning, externally pissed off with every facet of who Richie is as a person. How can he just _say_ things like that? Say them, and mean them, and still walk away like he’s immediately forgotten?

Because Richie is already on his merry fucking way, yelling across the theater at Bev about what she wants for dinner, and Eddie is left breathing so hard that he wishes, fleetingly, he still carried around an inhaler.

*

Tech week looms closer and closer. Eddie feels like his body is a length of wire being wound tighter and tighter with each passing day, and he has a feeling he’s not the only one. Beverly gets quiet before she goes onstage. Stan brings his bird book to rehearsal and disappears inside it when he’s not acting. Richie, of course, manages to be even louder and more annoying than usual.

He’s onstage with Connor Bowers, running the lead-up to their duel. Richie is caterwauling his lines up to the very rafters of the theater, and it’s over-the-top in the best of ways. Connor keeps cracking up, forcing them to start the scene over.

Eddie is in the wings, just watching. Mrs. Hanscom kept Richie and Connor back to run this scene while everyone else took a break; Eddie’s under no obligation to sneak around onstage once they finish.

So he just watches, feeling some small jealous thing stir in his stomach.

Richie and Connor get on pretty well. It’s annoying. Eddie doesn’t like it when anyone other than the Losers gets Richie’s smiles and jokes. _He’s ours,_ Eddie always wants to say. 

Or, more dangerously, _he’s mine._

Not like it matters. Come September, Eddie will be gone, and Richie and Connor will be heading back for another year at Derry High.

Once more Eddie takes a moment to curse his mother bitterly, for deciding so suddenly that her Eddie-bear wasn’t getting the education he deserved in a town as small as Derry. Summer was just settling into dusky bloom when she’d told him they were moving to Boston, and no amount of pleading or even yelling on his part had done anything to change her mind.

It was supposed to be an idle summer, full of friends and fireflies and even Shakespeare, begrudgingly. Now every step he takes is so loaded down with preemptive sentimentality that sometimes he feels like he can’t breathe.

(He can breathe just fine, just _peachy,_ but he puts a hand on his chest to remind himself.) 

Connor and Richie finish running the scene, and Richie comes bounding offstage with so much energy that he all but tackles Eddie; their ensuing shouting match almost brings the entire rehearsal grinding to a halt. But that’s fine. As long as Eddie is the center of that boundless attention, everything is fine.

“Eddie my love! Were you watching? Did you like it?”

“Let go of me, you gremlin, you’re all sweaty—”

“I’m building up a natural musk, Eds my boy. Drives the ladies wild.”

“We’ll have people passing out in the front row at this rate!”

“Yeah, overcome with _lust.”_

“You couldn’t seduce a woman if your goddamn _life_ depended on it—”

 _“BOYS!”_ Arlene Hanscom doesn’t yell very often, but she has quite a set of lungs on her when she needs ‘em. “Could you two _please_ calm down!?”

Once everything gets settled again (Richie having been banished to the back of the theater to sit by himself, a state of affairs that will only last as long as it takes one of the other Losers to sneak back there and join him) Eddie slips into the green room, wanting a drink and a glance at his script.

Bill is there, writing names on the soles of character shoes. “Hey, Eddie.” Eddie hops up to sit on the table next to him. “B-b thankful you’re n-not d-d-doing this. P-people’s feet _stink.”_

It’s easy to make an appropriately disgusted noise, and for a moment the two of them giggle together like they’re still kids. 

They basically are. But sometimes it doesn’t feel like it anymore. Sometimes they just feel…older.

Eddie swings his feet a little bit and decides to ask a question that’s been on his mind all summer. “Bill? Why did you decide you didn’t wanna act this year?”

Bill bites on the end of his black marker as he thinks about it. “I really liked b-being Hamlet,” he says, after a bit. “B-but it also m-made me really s-s-sad. He’s a s-sad guy. I kuh-kind of felt exhausted all the t-time.”

Eddie nods. He can understand that. Sometimes, after a really intense scene, he feels like he could sleep on the couch in the green room for a week.

“And I d-didn’t want to k-keep thinking about d-d-d…” He stops and swallows. _“Death._ Last s-summer it was kind of helpful. In a weird way.”

“Like catharsis,” Eddie says, even though he only has a very dim definition of the word.

“Yeah. B-but I didn’t want to d-do it again.” He sighs. “Besides, there were s-s-so many fucking _lines_ to memorize.”

Eddie nods fervently. Boy, are there ever. 

Bill sets down the last pair of shoes. As ever, he seems to find the heart of a matter without being told. “You’re g-gonna be really good, Eddie. I m-mean it.”

Eddie kicks his feet, embarrassed. “Thanks,” he says. “I like it. I like doing it.”

Bill nods. It feels like quiet approval, private pride. He goes back to writing names on the shoes. Eddie slinks back into the theater, certain that he’ll be wanted soon.

When he peers around the edge of the curtain, he sees that both Ben and Stan have joined Richie in the back of the theater. All three of them wave; Eddie waves back, and smiles.

*

Eddie can’t really sleep the night before tech week starts.

He knows he needs the rest, that the rest of the week will be hell from start to finish with last-minute memorization and missing props and flubbed entrances. He’s heard horror stories from Bill about last year, when it seemed like the whole show was doomed to fail until by some miracle they pulled it off. 

They’re going to have rehearsals every day, for hours and hours. He needs to be in tip-top shape. But he just can’t get to sleep.

Call it nerves. 

(Call it the memory of the last time he saw Richie, on the sidewalk behind the theater, just getting ready to leave with Beverly. He’d waved at Eddie and yelled, “See you on Monday, Eddie my love!” And Eddie had waved back and then walked home feeling like he had a hole in his heart.)

Soon it will be August. Eddie will play Romeo, out-loud and in front of an audience, and then his mother will bundle him into the car and take him away from Derry forever. Exiled, as it were. Call him a fucking method actor.

He flips over and presses his face into his pillow, restless and furious about it.

There’s a tap on the window.

Eddie sits up immediately. The Losers don’t often try to reach him in the middle of the night, too frightened of setting off his mother’s ire, but it happens enough. There’s no trepidation in Eddie’s heart as he kneels on top of his covers and slides the window up as quietly as he can.

The night air is cool when he sticks his head out. “Who’s there?” he whispers into the dark.

A familiar voice comes lilting up towards him. “’Call me but love and I’ll be new baptized. Henceforth I never will be Romeo.’”

Eddie leans further out the window. _“Richie?”_

“I’m coming up.” Scuffling sounds. A dark shape in the tree, barely edged in orange from the streetlights. Eddie shuffles back on his knees so the lanky, skinny form of Richie Tozier can climb through the window and onto his bed.

“Dude, your parents are gonna kill you if they catch you sneaking out again,” Eddie hisses as Richie flops back against the pillows.

“It’s fine,” he insists, voice low. “Bev is covering for me.” He’s kept his feet in the air, courteously not letting his shoes touch Eddie’s comforter, and he tugs them off and leans over to set them on the floor.

“What was so important that you had to come all the way here?” Eddie asks, sliding the window back down. He’s cold, and grateful for the dark that makes it impossible for Richie to see the goosebumps that are prickling down Eddie’s arms and legs.

“You’re just the entry point,” Richie says, and Eddie can hear a smile in his voice. “Next phase of my plan is to slip into Mrs. K’s bed and—”

“Shut your whore mouth,” Eddie says, mimicking something he once heard Richie himself say, and then both boys have to clap their hands over their mouths to keep from laughing.

And oh, it aches in the best of ways. Eddie’s ribs feel like they’ll crack with the effort of keeping the hilarity in, and Richie is flapping one of his hands like he’s swatting flies, which just makes it worse. They lean against each other drunkenly, almost choking with the effort of staying quiet. 

“And they call _me_ Trashmouth,” Richie finally manages to gasp. 

“You’re a horrible influence on me,” Eddie says, and then buries his face in his blankets to muffle the helpless snort of laughter that fights its way out of him.

Finally they manage to calm down and take deep breaths. Eddie rolls over onto his back and after a moment Richie lies down next to him. They stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars on Eddie’s ceiling in a soft silence.

Eddie breaks it by saying, “You’re pretty good at it, you know. The Shakespeare stuff.”

“I have a talented tongue,” Richie says, and then hisses when Eddie digs an elbow into his side. 

“I’m trying to be sincere, jackass.”

“Try harder, dickwad.”

 _“You_ try harder, fuckhole.”

“Eddie, baby, if I get any harder I’ll have to call a doctor.”

“You’re _so—!”_ In Eddie’s indignation he forgets about the threat of his mother, and his voice pitches up to a dangerous level. Richie claps a hand over his mouth before the shout can fully leave it; Eddie struggles for a moment in furious disapproval before settling. He glares at Richie through the dark, even though all he can see is the shine of the streetlight on Richie’s glasses.

“Gotta be quiet, kiddo,” Richie whispers, and pulls his hand back. “Mrs. K will be heartbroken if she finds out how much time I spend in here.”

“You’re so gross,” Eddie mutters. “Rich. Seriously. Why are you here?”

“Maybe I just wanted to run some lines,” Richie says, settling back against the pillows once more. “You know, in case I really do have to step in and be Juliet.”

“I doubt that’ll happen,” Eddie scoffs, even as his heart takes up a jackrabbit pace. “Bev’s fit as a fiddle.” She’d shocked them all by revealing that she could cry onstage; or, at least, she could cry when it came to the scene of her fight with her Capulet father.

Richie’s knee nudges at Eddie’s. He has jeans on; they feel rough against Eddie’s bare skin. “Getting a little crush, Eddie Spaghetti? You’ve got some stiff competition.” His knee presses again. “That was a dick joke, in case you couldn’t tell.”

“I got it, thanks, you invertebrate,” Eddie snaps. “Do you really spend this much time thinking about our friends’ dicks? Don’t answer that. I do _not_ have a crush on Beverly.”

“Ooh, full name. You must be serious.”

Eddie sits up. “I am,” he says, as serious as he can manage. Richie sits up too.

“Why not?” he asks, and this time he doesn’t sound like he’s joking. “She’s pretty enough. All that red hair. And you get to kiss her.”

“What about _you?”_ Eddie retorts. “She lives with you.”

“Yeah, but…” Richie shrugs. “I don’t know. It feels just like having one of the rest of you stay over. That’s it. My parents keep giving me the eye. Makes me want to tear my hair out because there’s nothing _there.”_

“Yeah, well,” Eddie says, “same for me. I love Bev. Of course I do. But I don’t… _want_ anything from her. Not the way Bill does. Or Ben.”

Richie nods. Eddie hears it more than sees it, the shift of his shirt against the skin of his neck. This has happened before; a somber honesty that only arises between them in the middle of the night, when they can’t see each other’s faces. Even if Eddie wishes he could. It’s easier, somehow, to tell Richie things when it’s late and he’s tired and the dark settles softly in both of their mouths.

“I didn’t really come here to talk about Bev,” Richie says. “Or, like, I did. But not like this.” He sounds hesitant, and it’s so un-Richie-like that Eddie feels a frisson of fear in the pit of his stomach.

“What, then?”

Richie lays back down. “You gotta promise not to freak.”

“I’m not gonna freak.”

“I mean it.”

“Richie, just _say_ it.”

“Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “When I called her to invite her to Derry for the summer? She, um. She didn’t know who I was.”

The words don’t make sense to Eddie at first. _“What?”_

“We had to talk for…fuck, Eddie, it might have been almost an hour before it all really came back to her. It was like all our names had been buried.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Damn it, his voice is getting loud again. He lays down on his side this time, curled towards the dark shape of Richie’s body.

“She doesn’t, um, remember us when she’s not here. She says it fades. All of it fades.” Richie swallows. “When she comes back the memories come back, but… Leaving Derry does something to her.”

Eddie breathes. He can feel panic getting a grip on his chest and he doesn’t want to let it. “Do you think it’s—”

“I don’t know,” Richie says, cutting Eddie off before he can name the horror from last summer. “I have no goddamn shitting idea. But it was real, Eddie.”

“When were you going to tell us all this?” Eddie asks. “Does anyone else know?”

Richie shakes his head. “Not yet. Bev asked me not to tell anyone.”

“Then…” Eddie bites his lower lip. “Why are you telling me?”

“Because I couldn’t keep carrying it by myself,” Richie admits. His voice is hoarse. “And I told her that. So I think we’re gonna try and get everyone together sometime this week.”

“Fat chance, it’s tech week,” Eddie says. They’ll be kept running every minute of the day.

“Couldn’t sit still tonight,” Richie says, like he didn’t even hear him. “Ants in my pants. Heebie-jeebies all over. Figured I’d come see your mom and work off some of that frustration.”

“Stop pretending like you came here for her,” Eddie snaps. “You came here for _me.”_ And then he buries his face in his pillow, because he hadn’t meant to say that.

“Don’t get jealous, Eddie baby,” Richie says in his ear. “I might be making sweet love to your mother until sunup, but what you and I have is special.”

“I don’t want to forget you,” Eddie blurts, unable to react to Richie’s needling. Richie’s head snaps towards him, and Eddie amends it by saying, “Any of you. Fuck, Richie. Is that gonna happen to _me_ when I move?”

“I don’t know,” Richie says, and thankfully he doesn’t try to make a joke of it. “I don’t know, Eds. But, but—” His voice fails him for a moment. “At least we _know,_ right? We’ll make plans. We’ll make codes.” He tries to push his usual bravado back into his voice. “You’re gonna have to think of me every time you read Shakespeare for the rest of your life.”

(This pronouncement is halfway true. When Eddie’s freshman English seminar at NYU covers Shakespeare, every class will leave him with such a ferocious ache in his chest that he will visit the student health clinic no less than eight times in the month of January. But the kind nurses there will have no cure for him, and Eddie will be unable to fit Richie’s name into the iambic pentameter he studies.)

(But the boys don’t know that yet, and no one is there to tell them.)

Eddie snakes his hand down between their bodies to clutch at Richie’s. It’s scarier than maybe anything he’s ever done, clown stuff notwithstanding. But it’s worth if, for the way Richie grips his hand as tight as he can.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, because he cannot bear to let the silence rest in the bed with them. “We’ll make plans. You’re not getting rid of me that easy.”

“We’ll write down everything you need to remember,” Richie suggests. “Hey, you should get a tattoo!”

“Thanks, I’m not looking to get murdered by my mother at the age of fourteen,” Eddie snarks. Their palms are still pressed together, fingers interlaced, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. 

“At least if she kills you she can’t take you out of Derry.”

“I don’t want to die here,” Eddie says, quiet, ferocious. “Nuh-uh. No way.”

Richie squeezes his hand again. “Yeah. Me neither.”

“I’ll write letters,” Eddie says, because he can’t stop to think about what they’re doing for even a second or he’ll collapse in on himself like an old house. “Wait, I forgot, you can’t read.”

“Fuck you, I read lines on the daily.”

Eddie smiles into the dark, sleepy. “S’posed to be memorized by now.”

Richie makes a low, aggravated noise. “Memorize _this,_ you dick.” And he pinches Eddie’s arm with the hand that isn’t currently holding Eddie’s hand. Eddie yelps and wiggles away from him, but he doesn’t let go.

They brainstorm for a few more minutes, under the hazy glow of Eddie’s stars. Letters, phone calls, scheduled check-ins. Typing up a crash course to the Losers Club on the clunky computer at the Denbrough house, as a last resort. Eddie believes, truly, that they’re gonna figure it out. But he’s tired, and it’s getting harder and harder not to let his head tip forward onto Richie’s chest.

He can tell that Richie is falling asleep too; his words are getting blurred and drowsy, the way Eddie has only ever seen him at the rare sleepover. “If people can remember Shakespeare for three hundred fuckin’ years,” Richie mutters, nosing against Eddie’s shoulder, “then you can bet your ass I’m gonna remember you.”

Eddie breathes him in. Before he can decide what to say to that, he falls asleep.

*

Decades later, Eddie Kaspbrak fits his palm against Richie Tozier’s in a restaurant across town, and feels a sonnet bloom into his mind.

His heart beats unstressed-stressed.

**Author's Note:**

> i actually really wanted to write about a more obscure shakespeare play but then i thought about eddie as romeo for two seconds and completely blacked out. hope you enjoyed!
> 
> on tumblr as [kvothes](https://kvothes.tumblr.com/tagged/x) / on clown twitter as [@nonbinaryrichie](https://twitter.com/nonbinaryrichie)


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